


The art of wooing Arthur

by msmorland



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Getting Together, Inception Bingo, M/M, Post-Canon, Role Reversal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-17
Updated: 2018-07-17
Packaged: 2019-06-11 16:48:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15319884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/msmorland/pseuds/msmorland
Summary: “It’s my to-woo list, darling,” Eames says.“Your...what?”“My to-woo list,” Eames says again. “Like a to-do list, but for...wooing you.”





	The art of wooing Arthur

**Author's Note:**

> Here's my first 2018 bingo fic, for the prompt "Role Reversal." This one could also be titled, hi, it's me again with the secret-admirer fic.

For a second, Arthur thinks he’s misplaced a sheet from his notebook. The piece of paper is his usual dot-grid moleskine, after all, and it _looks_ like the sort of organized thing Arthur would write.

The words he reads— _list, ties, chocolate, sunshine,_ and on and on down the page—make no sense to Arthur, though. And they aren’t in his handwriting.

But he does recognize the handwriting.

“Eames,” Arthur calls across the warehouse. Eames turns around. “Did you...make a list?”

Arthur could swear that Eames _blushes_ , that he hurries back toward Arthur faster than he would normally.

“Don’t act so surprised, darling,” Eames says, as he plucks the page neatly from Arthur’s hand. “You’ll find I can be quite organized.”

_Huh_ , Arthur thinks.

He doesn’t dwell on the thought of Eames sitting there making a list. Not at all.

* * *

The next day, Eames shows up to the warehouse wearing a tie.

Arthur’s seen Eames in suits before—and they might be Arthur’s favorite look for Eames, because it’s hard to badly mismatch a suit—but he can’t recall a time he’s seen Eames wearing a tie unless he’s forging.

His first assumption is that Eames is mocking him: Eames likes to ridicule Arthur for dressing formally when they spend most of their time in disused warehouses anyway. But Eames doesn’t so much as raise a teasing eyebrow in Arthur’s direction.

And while it’s not a tie Arthur himself would wear, he has to admit it’s lovely. Patterned, but subtly, with none of Eames’s usual blaring colors or eye-searing paisleys. And it looks good enough on Eames that Arthur finds himself abruptly thinking about taking it off him.

Arthur realizes he’s staring when Eames says, “See something you like, pet?”

_Apparently so_ , Arthur thinks, still a bit stunned. But he pulls himself together.

“It’s shock, Mr. Eames,” he says briskly. “I didn’t know you knew where to buy a tie.”

“I know quite a few things, darling,” Eames says, and winks at him.

* * *

The day after that, the two of them are out to lunch—Ariadne and Yusuf having been mysteriously absent when Eames declared a lunch break and steered Arthur to a restaurant—when Eames gets up from the table and says something quietly to their waiter.

Arthur doesn’t think much of it. He and Eames have been talking, actually talking, about the job but also about other things, their favorite cities and their ideal non-dreamshare heists. Eames is a good conversationalist when he isn’t teasing Arthur incessantly or dropping pet names at the end of every other sentence.

Later, after they’ve finished their entrees and Arthur has waved away his dessert menu without ordering—Eames had, obnoxiously, ordered an ice cream sundae—the waiter brings out two desserts. There’s Eames’s ice cream, whipped cream atop the tall glass with a long spoon stuck into it, and a molten chocolate soufflé, which the waiter sets down in front of Arthur.

“I didn’t order this,” Arthur says, but the waiter just sort of shrugs at him.

Arthur looks at Eames, who looks back at him with an innocence Arthur knows has to be false.

“Did _you_ do this?” Arthur asks, remembering him getting up earlier to talk to the waiter.

“Maybe you have a secret admirer, darling,” is all Eames says. He extracts his spoon from the sundae and extends it across the table toward Arthur’s soufflé.

_I don’t want a_ secret _admirer_ , Arthur thinks. And then: _I want you to have ordered it. And not as a joke._

Oh.

That was an inconvenient revelation.

* * *

Arthur doesn’t sleep well that night. He has too much Eames in his head.

How did Arthur, whose entire job is not to overlook the little things, miss this? Miss not only that he was attracted to Eames—a fact that, fine, Arthur hasn’t been _entirely_ oblivious to over the years—but also that he _liked_ Eames. Romantically. That he wanted to go out to meals with him and linger over dessert, and then go back to shared hotel rooms and apartments and strip Eames carefully out of each of his hideous outfits.

Yes, Eames has flirted with him incessantly for years, but Arthur never let himself think that it meant anything. That there might have been any truth behind it at all.

How long has Arthur been a complete idiot about this? And what in the world is he supposed to do about it now?

By the time he gets to the warehouse the next morning, Arthur feels as though he’s lived an extra lifetime or two overnight, and he can’t focus on the account statements he should be analyzing.

So when Eames appears next to his desk and invites him out to help with surveillance on the mark, Arthur decides he might as well go. He isn’t getting anything done here, and maybe he can study Eames while Eames is studying the mark. Maybe he can do a fraction of what Eames does and find some answer to all of this in the details of Eames’s behavior.

It’s the only plan Arthur’s got, anyway.

* * *

They walk to the park where the mark takes her dog twice a day. The weather is beautiful—sunny and somewhere in the 70s, and Arthur has an unexpected pang of longing for Los Angeles. He doesn’t think of himself as someone who has a home, but if he associates anything with the word _home_ , it’s this kind of weather. He wants to roll around in it.

He’s so busy thinking that he doesn’t notice Eames’s silence until they reach the park, and Arthur and Eames have never been the sort of people to ask each other if they’re okay, so Arthur just follows Eames to a semi-secluded bench that gives them a clear view of the dog run. They sit, still silent, and Arthur forces himself to focus.

Still a bit fuzzy from lack of sleep, he’s cataloged everyone in and around the dog park several times before he realizes the mark isn’t there.

He checks his watch and turns to Eames—who looks neither surprised nor confused.

He’s just sitting there, already gazing steadily at Arthur. He looks, if this is even possible, both absolutely certain and utterly terrified.

“Eames?” Arthur says.

“Arthur, I need to—” Eames says, then stops. He takes a deep breath.

And then Eames unexpectedly, wonderfully, kisses him.

* * *

That night, Arthur follows Eames from the warehouse back to his hotel room. They’d traded glances all day, quick, charged looks across the warehouse whenever they could without Ariadne and Yusuf noticing. Now, as soon as Eames has the room door shut, he backs Arthur against it and kisses him until they’re breathless and dazed.

“Eames,” Arthur says. He doesn’t even know what else to say. He feels almost dizzy.

Eames takes Arthur’s hand and pulls him deeper into the room.

On the bedside table is a familiar piece of paper. _List, tie, chocolate, sunshine_. Arthur thinks back over the last few days. This list. Eames’s elegant new tie. The soufflé Arthur hadn’t ordered. A walk to the park in the LA-like warmth. They were all very... _Arthurian_ things, he sees now.

“Explain this,” Arthur says, picking the paper up and waving it at Eames.

“It’s my to-woo list, darling,” Eames says.

“Your...what?”

“My to-woo list,” Eames says again. “Like a to-do list, but for...wooing you.”

“For wooing me.”

Eames tugs Arthur toward the bed, leans in to kiss him again. “Yes, darling, for wooing you. My usual methods weren’t working, so I asked myself, what would Arthur do? And thus was born the list.”

Another kiss as Eames steps backward and Arthur steps forward. Eames continues, “You love lists. And ties. And decadent chocolate desserts, but you never want anyone to know that.”

“I never thought you were serious,” Arthur murmurs. “With the flirting.”

“Yes, darling,” Eames says, smiling gently. “I realized that.”

“You put a lot of thought into this,” Arthur says.

It’s something else, he sees now, that he’s misunderstood about Eames. Eames does work hard, does take things seriously, when he cares enough. And he does care enough about some things. Including, apparently, Arthur.

Eames, because he’s good enough with people that he practically incepted Arthur into liking him, hears what Arthur really wants to know: Eames could probably have anyone else in the world with his usual methods. Why go to all that effort, just for Arthur? Why wait around for Arthur to wake up?

“Darling,” Eames says, nuzzling at Arthur. “You’re so you.”

It isn’t exactly an answer. But it’s also, Arthur thinks, exactly the one he’s been waiting to hear.


End file.
